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lega0053: February 2012 Archives

It's amazing that some of our friends in the animal world are capable of being trained to perform tricks for entertainment or learn skills to help aid us in our life-or even their own. Man's best friend, Jane Goodall's chimpanzees, and even Shamu all have acquired and learned skills to use for one of these purposes.

For this blog post, it's all about cetaceans and how they learn. Cetaceans include marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and porpoises. They're noted for their high intelligence, which also makes them excellent learners! Through positive reinforcement
these flippered friends quickly learn tricks like the one seen in thisShamu performance.

Training is done through the use of hand signals and targets and when the behavior is done correctly, the animal is rewarded with food, attention and toys. If the animal doesn't do exactly what it was told, they simply receive a neutral response and time to think about the task again. Through operant conditioning any type of behavior can be easily learned.